Teen gets jail sentence for impersonating officer

SARASOTA — A man who pretended to be a police officer using a janitor’s stolen walkie-talkie and a fake badge number was sentenced to four months in jail Tuesday.

Jesse Briandi, 19, who identified himself as Officer Vickerson when he pulled over a car with three teenage girls in February, pleaded guilty to falsely impersonating an officer Tuesday.

Briandi identified himself as Officer Vickerson, rattled off a badge number and called in information on his radio. The car had flashing lights near the headlights and looked like a police car.

He approached three teenage girls in his white Chevrolet Impala at Palm Plaza, and reportedly told the girls he was off-duty and en route to a robbery. He said he stopped them because they were driving the wrong way down a parking aisle and had “obstructed him,” a police report said.

One of the girls called her father, who is a Sarasota County deputy.

It wasn’t the first time Briandi has impersonated an officer, police said.

In October, he was arrested for reportedly pretended to be an officer responding to a knife fight between two students at the Sarasota County Technical Institute.